Speaker
Description
Annual vaccination remains the most effective intervention in reducing the burden of seasonal influenza epidemics. Considering vaccination strategies over multiple seasons could allow the identification of more effective interventions than those designed for a single season. The effect of vaccination depends on and changes both the immunological memory of the host population and the evolutionary pressure driving antigenic drift, creating a multi-season feedback loop in which current interventions influence future disease dynamics and vaccine performance.
In this talk, we explore such a multi-season feedback loop by considering how vaccination strategies targeting groups with different social contact patterns perform across multiple seasons. We explore if and when the dependence of vaccine efficacy on prior infection and vaccination history can change the relative effectiveness of targeting each group, as well as some structural trade-offs that emerge in long-term vaccination dynamics.
